You can now apply for support for collaborative ventures between Monash University and Warwick. In this second round for 2014, three schemes are offering a range of targeted funding opportunities to academic staff and students at both universities.

• Alliance Seed Fund: open to academic staff to support mutually-beneficial growth in research and teaching excellence at both institutions.
• Alliance Student-Led Activity Scheme: open to students from undergraduate to PhD level and supports activities that integrate students and transfer knowledge and innovation across institutions.
• Alliance Strategic Development Scheme: open to academic staff wishing to develop existing linkages through supported staff exchange or facilitated honorary/conjoint appointments; and/or project development support funding attached to a clear outcome, e.g. a joint degree.

Applications for all three support schemes close on 10 November 2014.

Previous funded projects

Since 2012, Monash and Warwick have supported 46 projects, initiatives and joint appointments that have facilitated deep collaborations in research, education and student-led activity between the two universities. The support schemes encourage current academic staff and students to collaborate and achieve results beyond those that can be accomplished by each institution individually.

Student-led activities supported by the Alliance to date have included exchanges of best practice in Formula Student motor racing, a virtual Law Moot and joint Philosophy workshops for research postgraduate students.

Staff projects funded in the first round of 2014 included research into the mental health and psychosocial wellbeing of children and adolescents with intellectual disabilities and autism spectrum disorders, a collaboration in complex proton collisions at CERN's Large Hadron Collider, and the development of an international research and teaching platform in the area of Global Cultural Economy.

Monash’s Dr Sarah McDonald and Warwick’s Dr Nicholas Monk were last year awarded A$45,000(£24000) from the Alliance Development Scheme to support their virtual classroom project. Their unit, Forms of Identity, is taught simultaneously at Monash and Warwick, with students functioning as a true cohort through face-to-face discussions, peer learning and out-of-class engagement via on-line forums.

Dr McDonald, from the Monash Faculty of Arts, said she encouraged academic staff to apply for Alliance funding as it offered unique support for international collaboration.

The Alliance funding has enabled Dr Monk and myself to successfully deliver an innovative teaching model that will hopefully be replicated by other disciplines as the demand for a global education grows."

Academic staff searching for potential collaborators at Monash or Warwick can use Piirus, a free online tool developed by Warwick that links academic staff within their field or across disciplines.

About Monash Warwick funding schemes